Annotated 14-8
Aw, Rachel, I love you, but you are kind of an easy target in a political argument at this stage of your life. Gravedust’s defense is relatively solid, but E-Merl trips himself up as usual, Frigg doesn’t DO diplomacy and Scipio knows that this part of the conversation is largely pointless.
If the gnomes wanted to start an actual fight, they’d’ve already done so: waiting them out means he can press them after they’ve exhausted their first wave of outrage… or, as here, after the suspects have grown uncomfortable with the threat the Peacemakers’ presence represents and have thus drawn attention to themselves.
I had zero intention of bringing Mich and Franz back at all after their appearance in Chapter 7, let alone promoting them from minor diplomatic annoyances to secondary villains, but sometimes when you see an opportunity to retroactively make it look like you planned things, you just have to go for it.
Turns out they serve this story a lot better than I could’ve anticipated, serving as polar opposites to Bandit. Yes, they’re both criminals, but Mich and Franz are the high-level white-collar, mostly-get-away-with-it kind, and they’re willing to sell out anything for their status while Bandit, as we’ve just seen, was willing to sacrifice what little status she had left in service to a higher cause.
I’m a little surprised the alt-text isn’t, “Yes, she’s definitely worth being an angry mob over, carry on!”
Is the “crazy wood elf” they refer to Syr’nj? Are they calling her “crazy” just for allying with humans?
I kinda presumed it was just because she was a wood elf. Their lifestyle – natural, simple, low-tech/high-magick – is something of a polar opposite to what we’ve been presented with. The gnomes, as a whole, might see that society as “crazy” and immediately brand all inhabitants thus.
That last panel, also. One of the better of the many, many wonderful Friggfaces, along with an insult that’s gotta be A-grade trollbait in Gnometown.
I love how sassy that gnome in the first panel is. Bet her first name is Sasser.
Sasser Sally, please tag!
It’s funny, the group doesn’t really have a good “Face-man” to talk their way out of situations like this. Syr is close, as a bit of a diplomat, but she’s a little too logical, and truthful to really grease the wheels (though if I recall that changes through the story, she’s still not exactly a charmer) and Byron when he’s a little less depressed can usually give a decent hero speech, but without Best, they lack that schmoozey charm their way past the angry crowd and make everyone like you, skill set.
Frigg is the Face-man, as in the “BASH YOUR FACE IN, MAN”
Haha, yeah. Diplomacy from the school of: If it aint broke, you haven’t hit it hard enough!
Just a note, it appears that the back button for this page is accidentally instead directing to the next page